Relics of War

Chapter Ten

The winter was indeed a harsh one, but Grondar had seen to it that his family was prepared for it. Meals got smaller and less interesting as the sixnights passed, and the pile in the woodshed shrank to a tiny fraction of its original size, but they were never in serious danger of either starving or freezing.

There were four blizzards in all, and a fifth storm that came close to qualifying, and after each one Garander peered out the loft door to see a thin streak of white smoke on the northeastern sky. He had no idea how Tesk was surviving out there in the forest, with no real shelter and no obvious food supply, but apparently he was doing just fine.

Finally, though, the days grew longer, the sun rose higher, and the snow began to melt. The cattle and chickens began to thrust their heads out out of their pens, enjoying the fresh air and sunlight. Grondar set Garander to sharpening the plow blade and checking the harness while he himself inspected the fences and marked the boundaries.

Ishta was given various tasks around the house and yard, but Garander was not surprised to see more than once that she had done a quick and sloppy job, and then slipped away. He was fairly certain she was sneaking into the forest to see Tesk, and not just playing in the irrigation ditches.

The two Shellas, mother and daughter, were airing out the house and the linens, and cleaning the accumulated grime from the floors.

For his own part, Garander did not feel any great urgency about visiting Tesk. He was curious about what the shatra was up to, and how he had survived the winter, but getting the farm ready for spring planting was far more urgent. He wanted to have fresh vegetables again, something more than dried beans and withered carrots; he wanted to see the grain bins full again. Once that was taken care of, he could spare the time to take a stroll in the woods and chat with the Northerner.

The snow had diminished to scattered islands where the bigger drifts had once stood, and the paths were starting to dry out and pack hard again, when a stranger’s voice called from across the west field.

“Hai, the house! Is this the home of Grondar of Lullen?”

Garander looked up from his work and saw a man standing near the boundary stone, waving an arm over his head. There were at least two other figures behind the waver.

Garander got to his feet and hung the leather strap he had been inspecting on a peg by the barn door; then he looked around for his family.

His mother and Shella the Younger were in the house, and probably had not heard the hail. Ishta was not in sight; he had last seen her feeding the chickens that morning. His father was at the far end of the south field, a distant speck on the landscape, wielding a hoe or shovel on something. He probably had not heard the call, either.

The only strangers who Garander had ever seen come calling were tax collectors; so much, he thought, for the baron’s promised payment for Ishta’s talisman.

There was no point in putting it off, though. He stepped away from the barn and called back, “Who asks?”

“Lord Dakkar, Baron of Varag, sent us to speak to Grondar,” came the answer. The stranger waved at his companions.

Garander did not remember the tax collectors traveling in groups. He glanced at his father’s distant silhouette, then began marching westward; he didn’t want to interrupt whatever Grondar was doing down there by the south fence if this was something that Garander could deal with himself. As he went he beckoned for the strangers to approach; there was no reason he should have to do all the walking.

The field was muddy, so Garander did not follow a straight line, but looked for the driest ground. When they met in mid-field, and he looked up from his feet, he was astonished to realize he recognized two of the visitors.

There were four of them in all, and each carried a good-sized pack on one shoulder. Two were soldiers in the same uniforms the baron’s guards in Varag wore, while the other two were the wizard Azlia and the sorcerer Sammel. They clearly recognized him, as well.

“I’m Garander Grondar’s son,” he said. “Grondar of Lullen is my father. What’s your business with him?” It almost certainly had something to do with Ishta’s talisman, he thought.

The lead soldier glanced at the others, and appeared about to speak, when Azlia interrupted. “Hargal, we know this young man. Let me handle this.” She stepped forward.

The soldier turned up a palm and moved aside.

“Wizard,” Garander said. “Why are you here?”

“There have been reports,” she said, “that your father claims to have seen shatra in the woods beyond his farm.”

Garander’s mouth opened, then closed again. He had not expected that. “Oh?” he said.

“Yes. Do you know anything about that?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Did your father see shatra in the forest?”

Ordinarily, Garander would have said that they would have to ask his father, but in this case he did not want them to do that. He just looked blank.

“Do you know what a shatra is, boy?” asked the soldier Azlia had called Hargal.

“I’ve heard my father talk about them,” Garander said. “They were a Northern thing in the war, weren’t they?”

Hargal gave the magicians a disgusted glance.

“Ordinarily,” Sammel said, “we wouldn’t take reported sightings of leftover shatra very seriously, but in this case we recognized your father’s name and remembered the talisman your little sister found, so we knew there had been Northern activity near here during the war. If a real shatra survived anywhere, this is as likely a place as any.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Garander replied.

“Where’s your father, boy?” Hargal demanded. He was obviously not inclined toward patience with this farmboy, regardless of what the magicians said.

“I’m not sure,” Garander said, carefully not looking toward the south field. “We’re getting ready for the spring planting; he could be anywhere.”

“Then we’ll wait until he comes home for supper. Come on.” Hargal started marching past Garander, toward the house.

“Wait a minute!” Garander protested. “This is our land; you can’t just come bursting in here!”

Hargal stopped, and turned to stare at Garander. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, and slowly, deliberately, he drew his blade and brought it around, then raised the point and pressed it to Garander’s throat.

Garander tried to step back, but found the other soldier was behind him, his own weapon unsheathed and held ready. The youth turned to see that Azlia had drawn her own dagger, and her other hand was groping for something in her pack. Sammel had unslung his pack, and was holding it ready.

“I think,” Hargal said, “that we can go wherever we please. Did you not understand that we are here on the baron’s business?”

“But…but it’s our land!”

“It’s within the baron’s domain, and you are the baron’s subjects,” Hargal answered. “Do you deny that?”

Garander looked down at the steel blade at his throat, and said nothing.

“We mean you no harm,” Hargal said, “but you will not interfere with us. Is that clear?”

“I don’t understand what this is about,” Garander said. He glanced toward the house, and saw his sister Shella watching from the window.

“It’s about the shatra,” Hargal said. “What do you know about it?”

“Nothing!”

Hargal glanced at the two magicians.

“The talisman isn’t ready,” Sammel said. “I can’t tell whether he’s lying.”

“I don’t sense any magic,” Azlia added.

“I don’t understand!” Garander repeated.

He was stalling for time, but he was unsure why; he did not have any plans that would be helped by a delay. All he could really hope for was that a few more minutes would give him a chance to think of something.

He was not even sure why he did not simply admit that yes, he knew there was a shatra living in the forest beyond the north field. It was not as if he thought these two soldiers would be any threat to Tesk.

But the magicians were an unknown element. His father’s superiors, during the war, had said that if anyone encountered a shatra they should call for magicians, but were these two what those officers had had in mind? Garander had always assumed that all the powerful wizards and sorcerers lived far away, in one of the Ethshars-Azrad’s Ethshar, or Ethshar of the Sands, or Ethshar of the Rocks, or Old Ethshar. Azlia was probably a real wizard, but Garander had not actually seen her perform any magic when he had first met her in Varag; Sammel had seemed knowledgeable about sorcery, but he, too, had not really done anything magical. Tesk, on the other hand, was loaded down with sorcery. He could burn a tree down by pointing a stick at it; he could stay warm and dry in a blizzard. Was there anything Azlia and Sammel could do to him?

Perhaps, Garander thought, he should tell them about Tesk…

But no. The real danger was not so much that they would harm Tesk, but that Tesk would kill them, and the baron would blame Garander and his family.

“We have come here,” Hargal said, “to determine whether or not a shatra has somehow survived, and is living in this area. There is nothing very complicated about that, is there?”

“But…aren’t shatra extremely dangerous?” Garander asked. “When my father told me about them he said his orders during the war, if he saw a shatra, were to get away from it as fast as he could and call for a dragon. He said a shatra and a full-grown dragon were a pretty even match. What would you do if you found one?”

“You let us worry about that!”

Garander glanced at the magicians, who were listening with interest-and perhaps some concern. “But look, sir, if a shatra kills the four of you, the baron might take it out on my family. I don’t want that!”

“So there are shatra around here?”

“I told you, I don’t know!”

“Garander,” Azlia said, “we aren’t here to fight whatever it was your father saw. We just want to know what it is. As you say, shatra are dangerous. It’s important for Lord Dakkar to know about anything that threatens his people, and that includes any leftover Northern monsters.”

“If it was really a shatra,” Sammel said, “we’ll go back and tell Lord Dakkar. We aren’t going to get killed, and no one is going to blame your family for anything.”

“You won’t try to put a spell on it?”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Azlia replied.

“I don’t think you could,” Sammel said.

Azlia threw him an irritated glance, then turned her attention back to Garander. “So, let’s start at the beginning. Your father saw something in the forest?” She gestured toward the trees visible beyond the farm. “Over there?”

Garander decided that sooner or later, at least some of the truth would come out. “Yes,” he said. “It looked like a man dressed all in black, carrying a big pack.”

“Did you see it?”

Reluctantly, Garander nodded.

“When?”

“Around the time of the first snowfall.”

“Not since then?” Hargal demanded.

“No,” Garander said. He was giving an almost honest answer to that one-he had seen the smoke from Tesk’s signal fires, but he had not seen Tesk himself in months, not since the brief meeting after the second snow.

“Have you seen any tracks in the snow?” Sammel asked. “Since then, I mean?”

“What kind of tracks?”

“The kind a man might leave.”

Garander shook his head. “Just my family’s. And some birds and small animals.”

The magicians exchanged glances. “If it was a shatra, it’s probably long gone,” Sammel said.

Hargal finally lowered his sword. “So we’ve come here for nothing?”

“Not necessarily,” Sammel said. “We might be able to pick up its trail.” He hefted his pack. “I have some sorcery that might help.”

“And I have spells that might, as well,” Azlia said.

“Assuming there’s anything to find,” Hargal said. “I’m not convinced these people really saw anything.”

“Neither am I,” Garander said, startling the soldier. “We saw a dark shape in the snow, but it could have been almost anything, really.”

“You said it was a man,” Azlia said.

“I said it looked like a man,” Garander said. “It was snowing, and it’s easy to get fooled by trees and shadows in the forest.”

“Hmph.” Hargal sheathed his weapon, and said, “We still need to talk to your father. You don’t know where he is?”

Garander shook his head.

“Then we’ll wait at the farm. Come on.” Without waiting for Garander or the others he marched past him, headed for the house.

Garander could not think of any way to further deter the invaders, and instead turned and hurried to keep pace with Hargal. As he turned he glimpsed Shella dropping the window-curtain back into place; he hoped Hargal had not seen it. Perhaps his mother and sisters would stay quiet, and not let the big man know anyone was there. He struggled to keep up with Hargal’s long strides.

The magicians and the other soldier followed, not quite as briskly.

When Garander and Hargal were perhaps three-fourths of the way across the west field when the farmhouse door opened and a small shape dashed out, headed away from them-Ishta.

For a moment Garander thought she was headed for the forest to warn Tesk, but at the corner of the house she turned south, rather than continuing to the east, and Garander realized she was going to fetch their father, not to warn the shatra. He relaxed slightly, and only then noticed that he had been tensed, his shoulders hunched, ready to run or fight.

That was stupid, he tried to tell himself; he wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight with a trained soldier like Hargal, and probably couldn’t outrun him, either.

Even if he did outrun him, what good would it do? What would he do? Where would he go? He didn’t know how to find Tesk, and finding him would probably only make matters worse.

He glanced to the south and saw Ishta running across the field; Grondar looked up from his work as his daughter approached.

Hargal apparently did not notice; he marched on toward the house.

A moment later the soldier’s gloved fist pounded on the door, and Garander heard his mother’s voice call, “Who is it?”

“We’ve come on the baron’s business!” Hargal shouted, as Garander came up beside him.

“Why should I believe you?” Shella asked. The door remained firmly shut.

Hargal’s disgust was obvious. “I’m wearing Lord Dakkar’s uniform, and who else would it be? Does it even matter? I’m the man with a sword. Open the door!”

“My husband will be here soon!”

“Good! That’s who I came to see.”

“What do you want with my Grondar?”

Hargal sighed. “That’s none of your business-it’s his.”

“What have you done with my son?”

“Nothing! He’s right here!” He turned and jabbed Garander with a finger. “Calm your mother down, boy.”

“Mother, it’s all right!” Garander called. “They’ve come about those stories Father told the neighbors!”

“What stories?”

“About seeing a monster in the woods!”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then the latch lifted and the door opened. Shella of the Green Eyes peered out. “What monster?”

“Your husband claimed he saw a shatra,” Hargal replied.

“He did?”

“Yes!”

The magicians and the other soldiers finally caught up, gathering at the door. “Hai,” Azlia called. “I’m the wizard your son met in Varag.”

“She is, Mother,” Garander confirmed.

“The baron’s wizard?”

“Yes.”

Shella considered that for a moment, then said, “My husband will be here soon.” Then she closed the door.